The Summer of the Bike

This is the summer of the bike. Let me clarify: the bike I never ride. Figuratively, the baby blue Ross Europa that stands precariously in the hallway of my building is a symbol. When I think of symbolism, I now think of reading my friend's AP students' essays about The Heart of Darkness and how they don't really understand symbolism. Symbolism is, in some ways, too easy. The bike, it seems, is a place for me to project my other should haves. Because it's there in my hallway. Every time I come into my building. Every time I go to smoke a cigarette in the back patio. I moved it a little the other day. Just because I felt like it must be in the way of my neighbor, the guy who watches out for the building and takes out the trash. I imagine if he had a problem with it, he'd say so. But the guilt I felt thinking about that is only a symptom of the guilt I feel for only riding my bike twice. It had cobwebs between the handlebars when I moved it.

Is it a coincidence that symptom and symbol sound so similar? I can't truly sum up the season with this bike. But as each day passes where I haven't done what I intended to do, it gets easier to identify the malaise with this bike or to allow the bike to stand for what the weeks could have been. It could have been the summer where Brooklyn was shrinking. On my bike, things could have gotten smaller. Yet things seem to have gotten bigger. Clouds have begun looming more heavily. Another rainy day without taking a ride.

Fudgin

From the Gowanus Lounge...

The Brooklyn Public Library 4th Annual PowerUP! business plan competition awarded Brooklyn Fudge with $15,000 for their great business plan on how to get more people to eat more fudge. Amanda Jones has concocted one hell of a business plan that has spread her family’s secret fudge recipe throughout our great borough, and broken the all limitations by creating a fudge that is both kosher and vegan! So, congratulations Amanda and Brooklyn Fudge. We look forward to breaking our resolution with a big ole hunka Dark Wasabi Pecan… or maybe the Dark Raspberry Almond?
–Vaduzuvunt

MMMMMM.... Yeah! Okay, so it's not really me that makes it (ha ha Nick), but doesn't the Dark Wasabi Pecan sound awesome?

Brooklyn Writers

If only the NY Times showed reciprocity in the same way as the Village Voice feature "Hate Us or Love Us," given the amount of times I quote the Times. We'd get more traffic.


There's a piece in the Book Review this week by Brooklyn-based writer Colson Whitehead called, "I Write in Brooklyn. Get Over It." What I love about the piece is that yes, it does seem a little silly to confuse "a geographical and economic accident with an aesthetic movement." It's true, there is nothing inherently creative about Brooklyn as compared to any other place in the universe. Although the water in the Gowanus canal does probably flow with some funky mojo.

What's interesting to me is the fact that my agreeing with Whitehead is, in a way, ironic. One of my favorite books of poetry of all time is Lunch Poems by Frank O'Hara, and a big reason I love it is for O'Hara's bopping-around-New-York thing. The first time I came to visit Brooklyn (and on subsequent trips), I wrote lots. I got pieces of multiple poems out of it. I thought a lot about how moving here would influence me as a writer.

Now that I live here, I haven't really written much of anything. I wrote a poem for a wedding, which included F train imagery (though I didn't name the train). I wrote a poem for a funeral, which included Manhattan skyline imagery. And that's it.

If living in this place influences me as a writer in any way other than superficially by giving me urban imagery, that'd be nice. But I probably won't find that out until much later, in a reflective mood, when I'm writing again. And probably not until I live somewhere other than Brooklyn.

PS. Whitehead asserts that if you Google brooklyn writer you'll get "Did you mean: the future of literature as we know it?" But, if you Google image search brooklyn writer you'll get this guy:

Jobless No More

That's right. While this may be the tiniest bit premature, (I'm going to the school tomorrow to have my commitment letter signed) I accepted a job offer from the High School of Telecommunication Arts and Technology this morning. Yes, after nearly 5 months of being accepted to the fellows program, completing fellows training, interviewing at schools, substitute teaching and watching almost everyone else in my class secure jobs, it finally happened.

And I couldn't be more excited. I was smiling at babies this morning. And they smiled back. In case anyone is seriously interested, here's the school's report card from this year and their review on InsideSchools, an independent group of reviewers that assesses public schools in New York City.

Yes!

Loyal readers, you can expect this blog to have a much more teacherly bent now that both contributors are full-fledged members of the tribe. Now if I could just get Mr. Gordon Glasses to step away from the margaritas and write a blog...

More Cop Out Blogging

Hoping to get a job in the next week. I'm one of two people left in my class to have not landed myself a permanent teaching job. But I've got high hopes and two teaching demonstrations this week for jobs. Wednesday and Thursday. Think of me if you get the chance. I got an ominous e-mail from the NYC Teaching Fellows office about my status in the program being zilch if I don't get a job by February 1st. The two schools I'm going to this week seem like my best prospects to date. So there's that.

In the meantime, before there's real news to report, I was watching the Sundance channel today and actually saw a poem on TV. Granted, it's Billy Collins, and I don't particularly care for his mainstream platitudes, but I was happy to see a poem on TV nonetheless. A Youtube search turned up a few others, so I've posted them here:

Happy Holidaze

From America to you...

Get a CLUE

Last night I attended the final event in a series called "Between the Lines" at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM). First, I'm ashamed to say that was my only visit to BAM since I moved here. But I am trying to get out more.

Anyway, A Public Space, the magazine I interned for over the summer, commissioned some works from writers and partnered to put on the evening of readings and video. One of the pieces was a video called CLUE: Color Location Ultimate Experience, directed by A.L. Steiner and choreographed by a duo called robbinschild. Here's a tiny snippet of the 10-minute or so clip we saw (I hear there's an even longer full-length version):



The clip really doesn't do it justice (it's grainy, small and short compared to the real thing), but I wanted to post it because it sparked a connection in my mind with another piece of art that I recently read: the novel U.S.! by Chris Bachelder.



The connection between them is an appreciation for collage as a meaning maker. The thrilling part of reading U.S.! is the force with which the collage of the first half of the book propels the main character (Upton Sinclair) through the second, more traditionally narrative half of the book. In the first part you find press releases, letters, eBay listings, songs, poems, phone logs, interviews, a whole pastiche lifted and/or twisted from other sources.

Similarly the video CLUE, which was more collage than directed narrative, provoked emotion through the stacking of image upon image and the heightened tension created by video played both forward and backwards. Even more than the choreography of the dance in the video, collage itself made the meaning.

The whole point of the tenuous-seeming connection I'm trying to make in this post is that sometimes it's nice to look outside linear time and narrative in a way that isn't so self-aware.

And here's another clip of CLUE:

Incest

So this post is a little bit like winking at ourselves, but I'll write anyway.

This past Wednesday and today, I have been the substitute teacher for none other than Mr. Eric Gordon Glasses. The joy in this is meeting all the students that he speaks so highly/less fondly of. There are so many personality quirks in one room; it's amazing to think that Eric is in charge of them everyday. And they actually learn things!

I also like to ask them questions like, "Are you passing this class?" or "Don't you love To Kill A Mockingbird?" and then they ask me questions like, "When is Mr. Gordon coming back?" They miss him! And I get to say fun things like, "Don't forget about the quiz tomorrow!"

Not that I'm an Mr. Gordon impersonator. But wouldn't that be weird? Me, with a beard?

Cop Out Blog

This blog is a cop out. I don't have much to add, but I wanted to post the link to this article from the Village Voice: "The Body Beautiful"

What I will say about this article is that Automotive is the high school at which I'm doing my field training for the Fellows. The high school, as the article mentions, has a population of 1,100 boys and 60 girls.

So far, I have 1 class out of those I'm shadowing that even has a girl. A girl. I've seen a couple more in the hallways.

Right now 2 of my cooperating teacher's reading classes are studying a young adult novel called Speak, by Laurie Halse Anderson. The book details a story based on the author's life-- her rape as a high schooler.

It's an interesting dynamic to teach a book about a woman's story of rape as a female teacher in a roomful of boys. So far they are respectful and really seem to empathize with the protagonist. It makes me hopeful that they'll not only learn about literary technique, but also basic human interactions and morality.

I guess I wrote more than I thought. I am so good at blogging.

Fairway to Heaven

We went to a ridiculous/wonderful market in Red Hook today. Eric has been there a couple times before, but this was my first excursion to grocery shopping heaven. It's called Fairway and it looks like this:


Now, just imagine all the good foodstuffs (or prisoners) inside a building with that kind of façade. Foodstuffs like this...

[No Photo Available]

(I said use your imagination lazy bones)

We decided the best thing to ready us for shopping was eating. So we went to the hot food bar. If you go, skip the buffalo tofu, grilled eggplant and wild rice salad. Go for the spinach cassarole.

That's what gets you with those hot food bars; it's hard to choose between things that just look good and things that are actually delicious. It's like your eyes are playing tricks on you, yet for once it isn't the work of adverstisers and food art people that make Taco Bell look good on TV.

Those people that dress up the food for ads are probably really weird. When they were kids, did they play with anemic reheated hamburgers instead of dolls? Time to put on the lettuce skirt! That will look so cute with the cheese top. Ok, maybe not.

It could have been the disappointing eggplant, but the store seemed even bigger once we had to wind our way back to the front to get a cart and actually go down the aisles. Don't get me wrong, seeing the organic section, cheese shop and produce was thrilling, but I got overwhelmed quickly. It reminded me of coming back from my summer trip around Europe, where the grocery stores were almost all bodega-sized, and going to Sam's Club with my dad. Overload.

Eric was patient with me, as he usually is. Even when I made him push the cart (while I lost it for 20 seconds in the dairy aisle). And we ended up with twice as many groceries for the same price as what we pay at the natural food store in our neighborhood.

Not that you care whether we save money on groceries. Or maybe you do (hi grandma! thanks for all those coupons!). Except that maybe with the money we saved we could do something fun and then blog about that instead of grocery shopping. But we probably won't.

Hot for You XXX Mermaids

So today was the Coney Island Mermaid Parade. Highlights:

- Seeing a parade float of dancers rubbing their bitties and grinding on eachother in "mermaid costumes"
- Seeing the following float of little kids dancing and blowing bubbles, completely oblivious to the goings-on of the float in front of them

AND happy birthday, Turkey!